Do you ever notice it's easier to believe the bad stuff about yourself, than the good? I mean, it's easy to believe it when people put you down, and it's even easier to listen to the whispers in your head telling you you're lower than what you really are. The Bible speaks of us as "sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty," (2 Cor 6), but it takes long hours of constant reminder to make a person truly realize who they really are. If we keep a person in prison long enough, they will eventually believe that they belong there, even if they do not. That's why the apostle Paul tells us to keep our minds set on heavenly things (Col 3), on our future place of glory and ever-increasing wonder and amazement (2 Cor 5), living in the heavenly realm where beaches never end and the skies are so beautiful they set you free every time you take in a breathe, staring into a vastness with no beginning or end... Can you imagine the beauty that awaits us? My heart longs for that place called Heaven, the place where the Perfect One dwells and we along with Him... truly, our imaginations have a greater purpose than to dwell on the things below in the world. How often do we fill our minds with songs and stories that only take us to the tallest mountains on earth, yet even the highest places in the world are lower than the lowest places among the stars... and beloved, we were meant for the stars.
There was once a very popular story called "Pretty Woman", about a prostitute who, being found by a very wealthy and noble man, falls in love and remembers the person she truly is that she had long ago forgotten. Coming from a troubled past, the lack of a loving father and the discouragement of a bitter mother, she went from man to man only to find that she believed she was worth no more than what she had been told all her life, attracting unruly, cruel, and merciless men. Yet when this good man came to her, he saw beauty in her she once only dreamt about in the dreams of her youth, and slowly she began to change in a way she never knew was possible; she changed the way she saw herself… as a person meant to be truly loved. Perhaps it was the new clothes he bought for her, or perhaps it was the frequent meals she had that were not out of Chinese take-out boxes… or it just may have been the dignity she was treated with that was due to her as a child of the living God, I mean, after all...
We are all equal under the sun.
Whatever it was, this man saw a light and beauty that awaited her, a light that was dying to be set free, washing over fields of gold and spilling over mountain tops and sapphire blue lakes on warm summer mornings…
For no light is meant to be hidden.
She recalls the time when she was a little girl being punished by her mother, trapped in the basement, dreaming of a knight in shining armor that would come and rescue her from the evil queen. And when the generous man offers to buy her an apartment and a car and take her off the streets, she refuses him. Why? She refuses him because she no longer wanted to be treated as someone’s property, she refused him because she knew what she was worth, and it was more than any amount of money could ever buy. For knights in shining armor never come for mistresses to put up in penthouse suites, but comes for the beautiful princess he will one day make his bride. This movie captured the hearts of millions because there was a part in every one of us that was waiting for a knight to come and rescue us. Yet are we worth saving? Are you? One by one, the wicked queens and dragons come knocking, reminding us of our chains, for freedom is meant only for the free.
My dear friend… You have dreamt dreams too, haven’t you? Perhaps you were young, and perhaps you have convinced yourself that dreams are just for kids, and that we’ve “grown out of it." But my dear friend, the beauty of children is their capacity not only to dream, but to believe in those dreams and live them out as free spirits. It is as if their innocence realized a greater blessing than our knowledge ever offered; faith. My dear friend, let your heart stir tonight, for you are worth more than what you have come to believe about yourself, for you were not meant to search for happy moment after happy moment as a person constantly needing to draw water from a well, but you were meant to be filled with happiness, a spring of water bursting inside of you that is not finite but infinite… for how many people once dared to dream of eternal bliss?
Didn't you?
One day, just as this woman saw, a knight in shining armor came to rescue us, yet this knight was not dressed in armor clad by iron or steel; His armor was clothed in heavenly light, a light the world could not see or touch... And He did not ride on a beautiful stallion made for the fading kings of the earth, but on a humble colt, showing us the Kingdom of Heaven is not found in the precious things of earth, but humanity must be found again by the precious things of Heaven; He is the Lamb that was slain for the sins of all the world. He came to take away the pain, the hunger, the fear of damnation, and free us from our mistakes and the guilt that haunts us so. He comes in the Name of love and the Name of God Himself, a Joy giver that never stops giving, and leaves us with a Message of true, unfiltered, unedited, and completely perfected, love. He is Jesus Christ, and there is none like Him. He loves, He forgives, He is patient and ready and willing to heal… for He did not come for the self-righteous, the proud who claim on rooftops they need no help yet cower away in their cold rooms lying alone on their cold beds… no, He is the one who gives grace and mercies to the humble, who carved out the rivers and the oceans with so much beauty and light that we can see glimpses of what is to come, so we would thirst for more than water, and seek that which is greater. Come and see Him while He knocks on your door, for you are no stranger to Him... you are His son, His daughter, and He has been waiting for you for a very long time. Come home now.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him." John 3:16-17
When Our Strength Fails Us
Recently, it seems I have run into several people around me, who feel they have lost a reason for living. I hope this letter, is more than just a letter, but a stirring in your heart to know that when your strength fails, there is a greater hope in which all people can turn to, to find hope.
"I find myself always looking to be inspired, to feel something, to actually have something better to say to people than just, "I'm ok". To actually say that my life was lived and I did something with it, that I actually inspired people, that I helped people grow into the butterfly that flutters outside their window, that I am someone worth mentioning, and not worth mentioning at all.
That my life was worth living.
I know we all say that ambition is important, but more important than ambition is what that ambition is. One would say Martin Luther King Jr. was very ambitious, a charismatic visionary, a man who would not yield to the predominant public opinion that blacks (or any other race) were inferior to someone born with pale skin. We would also say that Adolf Hitler was also very ambitious, a charismatic visionary, a man who would not yield to the predominant public opinion that germans were inferior to someone born in another wealthier country. Hitler's ambition was to prove that the Aryan race was greater than all of mankind. MLK's ambition was to prove that all races were equal under God.
I look in my heart and around me and I see us, our young generation, where so many are of us are still lost in our ambitions. Too afraid to look into the mirror that even when we do look, we keep one eye closed. Driven by our fears, blinded by our goals and "how to" lifestyle, so enamored with the thought of being on top of that ladder that that ladder has become the most important thing in our lives. Confused and broken, we've forgotten that life is more important than money, the body more important than clothes. No one says they live for wealth, but 98% of the American country live as if it is. We need money, but what is the ambition driving us? Why do so many people in this country hate their job? Or their boss? Wish they had a raise in pay? Why do so many people, given more money, continue to desire more? Is it so hard to see that we are so easily driven by our fears, or our desire for pleasure? And to what end? Our fear of being poor, our fear of looking bad in front of our friends, the pleasure of being rich, the pleasure of looking good in front of our friends... Holding onto something that speaks nothing of truth or love, our climbing has stripped us of our very essence because we are no longer ourselves. We have become our pleasures, we have become a product of our fears.
I have a dream too. I have a dream that one day I will live a life that is filled with good fruit, with love and compassion, understanding and wisdom, that though the worries of this life have laid a heavy burden on our shoulders, that it will not lay it's grip on our throats and choke our every breathe. And I know this worry, and I know you know it too. We've seen multi-billionaires jump off 30 story buildings after their company went bankrupt, and 60 year old farmers who gave 99% of their money away (over a million dollars) to start a ministry for troubled kids who felt just like we do now; afraid. So where is the heart of this country? Where is our soul?
I use-to sit high atop my horse living every day as if I was immortal, following every desire and pleasure that was in my heart, making my own rules, searching only for the next high... and for 5 years I lived in an ocean of fear and pleasure... only to find that the sparkling blue ocean I had sailed my ship on was an unforgiving desert... and the water I was drinking was grains of sand, seeping through my fingers...
So where will I go now in this place? Will I die here just as I lay? Or will I seek out the truth and beauty that is in my life? I see only one set of footprints in the sand now.. Carry me through oh God, carry me through..."
"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him." -John 3:17
"I find myself always looking to be inspired, to feel something, to actually have something better to say to people than just, "I'm ok". To actually say that my life was lived and I did something with it, that I actually inspired people, that I helped people grow into the butterfly that flutters outside their window, that I am someone worth mentioning, and not worth mentioning at all.
That my life was worth living.
I know we all say that ambition is important, but more important than ambition is what that ambition is. One would say Martin Luther King Jr. was very ambitious, a charismatic visionary, a man who would not yield to the predominant public opinion that blacks (or any other race) were inferior to someone born with pale skin. We would also say that Adolf Hitler was also very ambitious, a charismatic visionary, a man who would not yield to the predominant public opinion that germans were inferior to someone born in another wealthier country. Hitler's ambition was to prove that the Aryan race was greater than all of mankind. MLK's ambition was to prove that all races were equal under God.
I look in my heart and around me and I see us, our young generation, where so many are of us are still lost in our ambitions. Too afraid to look into the mirror that even when we do look, we keep one eye closed. Driven by our fears, blinded by our goals and "how to" lifestyle, so enamored with the thought of being on top of that ladder that that ladder has become the most important thing in our lives. Confused and broken, we've forgotten that life is more important than money, the body more important than clothes. No one says they live for wealth, but 98% of the American country live as if it is. We need money, but what is the ambition driving us? Why do so many people in this country hate their job? Or their boss? Wish they had a raise in pay? Why do so many people, given more money, continue to desire more? Is it so hard to see that we are so easily driven by our fears, or our desire for pleasure? And to what end? Our fear of being poor, our fear of looking bad in front of our friends, the pleasure of being rich, the pleasure of looking good in front of our friends... Holding onto something that speaks nothing of truth or love, our climbing has stripped us of our very essence because we are no longer ourselves. We have become our pleasures, we have become a product of our fears.
I have a dream too. I have a dream that one day I will live a life that is filled with good fruit, with love and compassion, understanding and wisdom, that though the worries of this life have laid a heavy burden on our shoulders, that it will not lay it's grip on our throats and choke our every breathe. And I know this worry, and I know you know it too. We've seen multi-billionaires jump off 30 story buildings after their company went bankrupt, and 60 year old farmers who gave 99% of their money away (over a million dollars) to start a ministry for troubled kids who felt just like we do now; afraid. So where is the heart of this country? Where is our soul?
I use-to sit high atop my horse living every day as if I was immortal, following every desire and pleasure that was in my heart, making my own rules, searching only for the next high... and for 5 years I lived in an ocean of fear and pleasure... only to find that the sparkling blue ocean I had sailed my ship on was an unforgiving desert... and the water I was drinking was grains of sand, seeping through my fingers...
So where will I go now in this place? Will I die here just as I lay? Or will I seek out the truth and beauty that is in my life? I see only one set of footprints in the sand now.. Carry me through oh God, carry me through..."
"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him." -John 3:17
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